"It's so easy to laugh. It's so easy to hate. It takes strength to be gentle and kind." Trying, anyway.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

It hasn't all been storm clouds! Saturday, we took advantage of the unseasonable warmth to take a drive, with our friend Jim, to Staten Island, where I had every intention of listening to nothing but Wu-Tang Clan, finding a 20's-vintage beach village of charming bungalows that an old bohemian had just been waiting to sell for $100 to the right young people, and eat at Killmeyer's Old Bavaria Inn and Beer Garden. Of these, we did exactly one. Unfortunately, Staten Island seems to be a bit short on 20's beach villages nowadays; my biography of Dorothy Day was somewhat misleading on this point.

We didn't get as early a start as I'd hoped, and, as Slim told Jim on the phone, "Sadie's in a vintage girl scout uniform and raring to go!" We did have a picnic at Fort Wadsworth, which is truly lovely, listen to a lot of "Grime" rap, which Jim is very into right now, and try to find this abandoned monastery which I'd read was haunted but which apparently got torn down last year. This search brought us to the campus of a small Catholic college, where we kind of stood out, due to my uniform, Slim's wife-beater and work boots, and Jim's tee shirt, on which he'd tie-dyed the sweat stains. I also did a dramatic reading of The Man Who Was Thursday.

Killmeyer's did not disappoint, however, in age (150 years), ambiance (dirndls and an oom-pa band called "The Happy Tunes") or food. In fact, I ate so much wurst, mashed potato, red cabbage, spaetzl, German potato salad, schnitzel and pretzel, to say nothing of whatever Spring beer we were quaffing, that I felt really sick afterwards, fell asleep in the car, was too ill to go out to a party, groaned all night long, and had one of the worst food hangovers ever the next morning. I highly recommend it. And the food kinda reminded me of the late, lamented Berghoff's, which is reason enough for some of us.

I hope you enjoy the book. I'm now in the process of revising it, drawing of Dorothy's journals and correspondence and the memoirs of others who were close to Dorothy. I have vivid memories of her beach cottage on Staten Island, which sadly exists no more. It was a very simple dwelling. Iron stove. Sink. A table for Dorothy's typewriter. Would that I had taken photos, but at that period of my life I had no money for buying film, not to say having prints made.